The Useless Critic 2.0

A few quick additions before diving into this (this being the actual post, which was written and copied from MS Word, so fingers crossed the formatting doesn't get mangled in transition): since writing this, the The Fault in Our Stars movie has come out, and is doing pretty well at the box office. There were plenty of details omitted, but that's a focus for another post entirely. Moving along...             It’s May 26 th , and I’m finally getting around to checking out The Fault in Our Stars . Partially because the movie will be out in June, which is practically here already. I’m mostly giving it a chance, however, because I’ve developed a semi-strong bias against it. I don’t really feel that’s fair, as all I have to go off of are quotes and Tumblr posts by John Green fans (neither of which are a particularly strong basis for an overall assessment of anything ever). This will be a (relatively short, I should hope) chronicle of ...

Ah, The Fault in Our Stars… There is so much that I want to say about this book-to-movie adaptation, but when I try to talk about it I am usually reduced to a puddle of tears. This film was released just this weekend, on June 6th, and let me tell you… it exceeded all my expectations. John Green’s book, The Fault in Our Stars , is, in short, amazing. I fell instantly in love with it the first time I read it. The book, although about the extremely depressing topic of teenagers with cancer, made me laugh unexpectedly and cry like a small child. Naturally, it only made sense for me to want to experience that beautiful torture once more through film. A quick rundown of the storyline is that Hazel Grace, a 16-year-old with thyroid cancer, meets Augustus Waters, a 17-year-old who lost his leg to Osteosarcoma. The novel details the growing attraction between Hazel and Gus and how they, ultimately fall in love, despite Hazel’s attempts to keep Gus away. They even get a free paid ...

By Guest Writer Taylor Birk I never thought that I would laugh at a book about cancer patients. Yet, this past spring, I found myself laughing until I was crying at "The Fault in Our Stars." I’m not new to John Green novels. I read his first book, "Looking for Alaska," back in 2010. So, I shouldn’t have been surprised he would be the guy to make me laugh while reading a book about a serious subject. Now, I didn’t laugh the whole time, of course. The book was very serious at times. In fact, I cried more often than I laughed. To be specific, I started crying during chapter eleven and I didn’t stop until the book was over. I felt so many emotions while I was reading that book. Green took a serious subject, made it a lighthearted story, but didn’t make it completely unbelievable. He kept the not-so-pretty aspects of dealing with an illness and just wrote an amazing novel. I think it’s safe to say I love John Green (not in the same way I love Tom Hiddleston, bu...